The Trees Are Burning
by Aisho9
Summary: Connor and Abby are no longer trapped in the Cretaceous; they're back in Surrey, business as usual. But after so long away, some things have changed. How will they feel tomorrow? Next month? Ten years from now?


So, yes, I've written a Primeval fanfiction. I was determined _not_ to watch Primeval, actually, because really: dinosaurs? But. I watched Alice, and as might be expected, fell in love with Hatter, and this is when my clever Anglophile friend chimed in with, "He plays Connor in Primeval, you know!" So I think to myself - what could it hurt? Just one episode. Nothing terrible. One episode became two, two became four, and so one, ad infinitum, until I found I'd watched them all. And it's all Connor and Abby's fault, because I adore them (and secretly want Abby's hair). So this is really a love letter to them, because they're very precious, a more realistic couple, I think, than you find in most shows nowadays. :)

* * *

Connor and Abby sat along the bridge, legs hanging out over the edge, feet kicking gently back and forth. Every so often their feet would synchronize and it looked almost as if they were trying to use the bridge like an enormous swing. Connor was watching one of Abby's shoelaces, hanging loose from her sneaker, swing round and round in time with her feet. It was almost mesmerizing.

There was a tub of ice cream between them, and every so often they'd dig their respective spoons inside and scoop out a glob. The air around them was devilishly cold, and the breeze wasn't helping, but they kept eating their ice cream anyway—because they wanted to—and sat together in silence, kicking their feet. The street lamps were all that illuminated them, casting yellow highlights over their hair and shoulders. Connor knew that Abby was wearing blue, and that he was wearing red, but in the monochromatic flush of the world around them, there was only yellow, and black.

The ice cream was half finished when the sun finally rose. There were broad streaks of pink and blue and purple across the sky, and where the sun just touched the rooftops of Surrey, there was a vibrant blaze of orange and yellow.

"The trees are on fire," murmured Abby, and Connor smiled. He'd awoken her once—at the cave they'd stayed in—shaken her out of sleep, and shouted at her to come see, and when she'd seen the light streaking over the treetops of the Cretaceous forest, her first sleepy response had been, "Are the trees on fire?" He'd laughed at her until he cried.

"Buildings, technically," said Connor, because he couldn't resist, and Abby rolled her eyes.

"You know what I mean, Connor," she said.

"Yeah," he said. "I do." He reached over and tucked his fingers in between hers, and though they were so numb with cold he could barely feel a thing, a little thrill still shot through him, right to his heart. Abby was looking at the sunset but she smiled like she knew what he was thinking. She probably did.

"I expect we'll get tired of this, someday," he said, letting his spoon drop down into the half-eaten tub of ice cream. He leaned back a little to watch the deep blue of night receding before the oncoming swath of pinkish-orange.

"Someday," said Abby, who didn't really believe anything of the kind.

Connor gave up leaning and just laid back, head pillowed on his hands; it was all the invitation Abby needed. She laid down too, and as she did Connor reached out his arm, so that by the time she had laid her head down, it was resting neatly in the crook of his shoulder. It was a swift, practiced move, perfected over the course of a hundred sunrises and a hundred sunsets. He tucked their hands into the spacious pocket of his jacket to keep warm. They'd have to get up soon—they were lying in the middle of a sidewalk, after all—but not quite yet.

"Or not," said Connor, eventually. "Who says we have to get tired of it?"

"_I_ don't say so," pointed out Abby.

"We'll be wrinkled old prunes, frozen half to death, wrapped in four oversized parkas," Connor said, grinning, and Abby added swiftly, "And a quilt for our knees!"

"Knobby knees that they are."

"Oh, quite knobby. Horrifically knobby. _Grotesquely_ knobby."

"I'll worship them," Connor said, in a mock reverent tone, and Abby slapped his belly with her free hand. He feigned an elaborate "_oof_!" that Abby paid no attention to whatsoever. Their breath fogged out into the air above them, making little clouds in the sky that looked enormous.

"C'mon," she said. "We need to feed Rex."

* * *

There was a little old man sitting out on the bridge. He always sat on the bridge, every morning, even though Mrs. McNally could see it bothered his knees to do it. It was always quite an enterprise to get his legs off the edge and swinging, but he managed it, somehow. Mrs. McNally saw him every morning from her bathroom window, and every morning she wondered what the devil he was doing. He looked half-frozen, poor soul.

Somewhere along the line she decided it was her Christian duty to bring him a thermos of hot tea, and so one morning she got up extra early and stood out in the darkness waiting for him. He came down the sidewalk slowly, almost creeping, but he was upright and he didn't need a cane; that was something. He didn't pause, even though she was sure he'd seen her, and simply continued on to his place in the center, and began the awful process of sitting down.

"Sir," she said, crouching down beside him, "I must sound mad, but I see you from my window every morning, and I thought perhaps you might like a bit of tea." She held out the thermos like a peace offering, and after a moment of silent appraisal, he took it.

"Much obliged," he said. His hands did not shake as he unscrewed the top, and his eyes were darkly intelligent; he was no senile old man, then, sitting on a bridge because there was no one to tell him not to. After a moment, Mrs. McNally sat too.

"Can I ask you something?" Mrs. McNally asked.

"A small price for good tea, I think," said the old man.

"Why do you sit out here ever morning?"

His dark eyes crinkled up round the edges, the pale streetlights just catching the crow's feet, the product of much laughter. "The trees are on fire."

"What?" Mrs. McNally asked, perplexed. She was beginning to rethink the senile bit.

The old man shrugged. "That's what she'd say. The sunrise over the treetops, you know."

"She," said Mrs. McNally.

"She's dead," confided the man. He turned his head until the shadows hid him from view, and she was looking only at one oversized ear and a thicket of greying hair, streaked here and there with a shock of white. At his temple there was a rather dashing bit of black.

"Oh," said Mrs. McNally. She wasn't sure what to say. "Has it been—ah—long?"

"Yes," he said. "Very long indeed." The horizon began, slowly, to lighten, and the old man said, "The trees have been burning without her for a very long time now."

Mrs. McNally turned her head to look at the horizon. The light lengthened and grew, stretching out towards the night and thrusting it back. She could imagine the sweetness of watching such a thing with another—and the bitterness of watching it alone. When she spoke, her voice was hushed, respectful. "Did you love her very much?"

He drank his tea, and the darkness still hid his face, but she could see that his hands were shaking now. She reached out and touched his shoulder. "Sorry. Stupid question—'course you did. Will you tell me how you met her? I love a good romance, you know."

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," he said, flashing her a sudden grin.

"Tell it anyway," she said.

The old man set down his tea, very precisely, and folded his hands in his lap. "It was the dinosaurs."

"Dinosaurs?"

He nodded. "Yes, dinosaurs. They were running amok, and it was our job to stop them …"

The sun rose higher, until Mrs. McNally could see the old man without squinting, and the streetlight winked off. Mrs. McNally thought the old man was a raving lunatic, but she sat with him on the bridge anyway and listened, and kept listening even though she should be getting on to work; she listened even though people began walking across the bridge, even though she was now _late_ to work, and then listened a little longer still. Because he was mad, absolutely mad—but it was lovely, his story. It was sweet. It was grander than anything she'd ever conceived of, or felt, for that matter; big as the sky and bright as the sunrise.

_The trees are on fire, Connor._

_Yes, love. They are._

_No. No, the trees are on _fire_, do you see? They're all burning, I can see them burning, they're burning—_

_The trees are burning for you, love. Shh, now. Sleep._


End file.
